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From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: What should be added to C
Message-ID: <1594@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-May-86 09:12:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.1594
Posted: Tue May 20 09:12:10 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 23-May-86 08:09:16 EDT
References: <590@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3570@nsc.UUCP> <1462@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Organization: Duke U Comp Ctr
Lines: 25
Keywords: exponentiation, arrays, FORTRAN
Summary: Exponentiation operator, variable arrays

Right now Fortran has four things over C:

o A richer set of floating point operators, including exponentiation and
  the so-called "in-line" functions (many of which ARE in C).

o A way of passing different-sized multidimensional arrays to the same
  subroutine.  (For instance, right now it is not possible to write a
  function in C that will invert a matrix of arbitrary size without use
  of some "trick," like making the incoming matrix one-dimensional and
  hard-coding the subscript computation or using arrays of pointers to
  pointers.)

o A very well-standardized set of subroutines and functions for
  scientific and engineering use.

o COMPLEX type.

C++ (with which I am unfamiliar) solves some of these problems, I
believe.  For instance, it is possible to do operator overloading, so
the COMPLEX type can be implemented in a fashion similar to Ada's.
-- 
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC  27706
(919) 684-3695
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